Sci Fi
Migration of a Hunted Herd
This is her eleventh time doing this. It’s busy. Crowded. Claustrophobic as always. Too many people for what the chipped placard at the sliding door allots. Yet here they all are. The commuters. The citizens. Standing like birds in a storm, they sway with each turn or dip in the tracks. There was a time when people sat. But she can’t remember it. Just another memory the older generation tells the younger. Another inheritance from a time without relevance. A distant golden age of ancestors who built this city and then moved on, having either escaped or died. The seats were stripped from the compartment long ago. Now everyone stands rigidly upright, staring this way or that. She beholds those buildings beyond which occlude the falling sun, imagining its light warming the skyline’s far face.
By S.P. Michael5 years ago in Fiction
Entropy's End
Entropy’s End Lights up. There is a small bed stage right covered in rags. Shelves with mechanical parts and provisions line the walls. A fire burns in a small chimney. A strange metallic doorway stands stage left. Everything is dirty and built from scavenged parts. EVE enters, she is dressed in a jumpsuit, breathing mask and cloak. She carries a large sack. She shuts the door behind her and seals it. She walks to the table and sets down the squirming sack, and a large makeshift crossbow. She sits at a chair and removes her mask. She is a woman of about 30. She stands and cautiously opens the sack. She pulls out a large insect. Its physiology is alien and asymmetrical. It has too many eyes. She takes it to the fire and pushes a large metal spike through it. It squeals and its limbs flail then grow still. She sets it atop the fire, it writhes but quickly stops. She returns to the chair and sits. She picks a remote control and presses a button. She takes a heart shaped locket from her neck and holds it out. A hologram of a young woman wearing a 1950’s housewife dress and heels appears, generated from the locket. She is tall and blonde with short hair. AIMEE begins to speak.
By Michael Watkiss5 years ago in Fiction
Promised
He heard a faint snap off to his left. Stopping, he tilted his ear to listen further, lifting the brim of his darkened boonie hat slightly with his finger. His other hand slowly moved to his hip, coming to rest on the top of the kydex holster that housed his sidearm. The silence weighed heavy around him, and his lack of motion contributed to the eerie peace he had found himself in. Calculations zipped through his mind, a reflex at this point.
By Robert Plante5 years ago in Fiction
2070
It was all so brain deadening. The jelly in my eyes had become sweet and sticky from the light of LEDs. I no longer counted time by the second, but by the heartbeats of the sphere. The lab remained dark so we could at least imagine something new were there. Every documentary and film about Elvis Presley had been digested. We spoke to his image I plastered upon the door, which read “Nine and nine make fourteen, four and four make nine, the clock is strikin’ thirteen, I think I lost my mind.” In our isolation and boredom, detail was our only source of novelty. Fennec had 37 seam-like scars running across her. I found Max’s signature mark under her left eyelid. She had not been aware of either factoid until my every sense was imbued with her dissection.
By Kadon Peterson5 years ago in Fiction
Memoir of a Teddy Bear
Her name was Amelia, and I loved her. I watched as the doctor disconnected her life support and wished I had been made with the ability to cry. Her arms still wrapped around me and holding me tight gradually grew colder as the warmth and last lingering traces of life left her, and it truly started to sink into my processors that my beloved owner was gone. That smile that always dazzled me, that laugh that had always warmed my circuits, it was all gone. She would never clutch me to her chest in bed at night, never whisper girlish secrets into my fuzzy ears, or sit me across from her as she held a tea party ever again. My entire reason for existing was gone.
By Valkyrie Ice McGill5 years ago in Fiction
Collar
Just kick her up the bum, I thought. One kick. Doesn’t even need to be hard. A nudge would be enough. Bruce rounded the corner. His scowl deepened like he knew what I was thinking. My brief moment of treason slipped away into the past. Just like all the other moments I’d spent in this house.
By Matt Holland5 years ago in Fiction
Zania's Locket
“Your shift will begin in the next five minutes. Please ensure that you are fully prepared to perform your duties. Remember! An efficient hospice is a happy hospice!”, Zania Sagan’s watch lit up with the daily five-minute warning timer as she quickly downed her morning coffee and made her way over the teleportation stations to sign in for the days’ work.
By Gene Foxwell5 years ago in Fiction
Number 30
“Ugh, this again. It has not worked now in over a year. Why do we keep trying?” The voice of a women over his shoulder seems to echo the thoughts of the people in the control room. “Because Grace, we’re all running out of time, and this is the only thing anyone can think of. Unless of course you have a better idea?” As Grace makes an audible groan, she backs away and asks the crewmember to her left, “Who do we have today?”. The crew member doesn’t break eye contact with the screen in front of them, “Subject’s name is Eve. She was one of the last to make the trip before we severed ties.” Grace, clearly not impressed, inhales, and looks around the room. She does not like that only a few of the people in the room have any idea what is going on. And time is not on their side.
By Brian Muise5 years ago in Fiction
I Think Of The Birds
“Rest assured; this is no reflection of my feelings towards you.” Katherine’s words were seldom comfort in the desert. Yet, in light of the last year, I no longer minded. Or perhaps, I no longer cared. Stood naked as the day we were born, our frail frames peppered by buckshot winds. she pulled the picture of us from her heart-shaped locket and cast it into the embers at our feet. Little eruptions sparkled from the pile, and the tightness in me gave way to a deflating sensation – this, I hoped, was inner peace. For the first time, we had nothing – nothing to bargain with, survive by, no memento of our struggle. Katherine was lying to me; the portrait was no bigger than a stamp – not resource enough to so much dull the chatter in our teeth. Another one of her catharses, her small revolutions. All we shared now was our bastard flame – part mine, part hers, but, ultimately, soon to be snuffed by the elements.
By Elliot Paisley5 years ago in Fiction
